How can we ever treat people equally if we continually point out differences?

If you watched the Super Bowl with the commentary off, and managed to miss the last two weeks of hype, when CBS flashed a picture of Indianapolis’ coach Tony Dungy on the screen, you might have noticed that he’s black. If you watched the Super Bowl with the commentary off, and managed to miss the last two weeks of hype, when CBS flashed a picture of Chicago’s coach Lovie Smith on the screen, you might have noticed that he’s black.

As well-intentioned as all of the hype was, mentioning that they were the first two black head coaches to win berths in the Super Bowl, I think it was a net negative. Why isn’t Tony Dungy just a regular NFL head coach? Why does he have to be a black head coach? If we see him, and we care to think about such things, we’ll notice that he’s black; but, so what? To me, that’s like looking at the rosters and starting to count off how many black or white players are on the team.

The best thing that we can do for racial equality is to stop treating race as something special; Tony Dungy and Lovie Smith are the head coaches of the Indianapolis Colts and Chicago Bears, period.